I'm glad the lawsuits didn't kill them but what Kahle tried to do with "Open Library" and "Project 78" was truly insane. Admirable but insane. They absolutely had to know right from the outset that the Media Companies weren't going to allow it to continue post-COVID.
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If amazon can download books I can also against what's missing from thw archive
Indeed, I consider this to be an okay outcome. It's the Internet Archive, not the All Information Ever Archive. It archives the Internet. There are other projects archiving books.
And it's the Internet Archive, not the Internet Barely Disguised Pirate Bay. I'm okay if the data they're archiving isn't super easy to access by everyone all the time, as long as it's being preserved. Someday eventually copyright law might become sane again, at which point these archives can come out of their bunkers. Until then those bunkers are important for keeping them safe.
I really think the Internet Archive did a downright stupid thing poking this bear with a stick. I'm relieved they survived and I hope they learned from the experience.
You archive it but don't publish it.
It's the approach I've been advocating for for years now, throughout this whole lawsuit circus. I got a lot of downvotes for it over the years too, people couldn't separate my position from capitulation.
Really, it's just a matter of fighting the battles you can win and not fighting the battles that will annihilate you simply on the basis of principle. The analogy I kept using was a man carrying a precious and fragile treasure going up to a bear and whacking it with a stick, and then acting like we should be sympathetic to them as they desperately scream about how the precious treasure was at risk now that the bear was eating their leg.
They should be focusing on protecting that treasure. Let the EFF take the bear on, that's what they are for.
Yes, the archiving and republishing would be illegal in most countries, but not in the US. Fair Use
They didn't face trouble over archiving the net, but over digitally lending e-books and audio.
Had a similar conversation over in Mastodon recently and yeah, this is a very fair point. The indiscriminate scanning and publication of copyrighted books shouldn’t have happened in the first place, especially when there are existing ecosystems for ethical lending/leasing/borrowing of books already in place, which benefit and are working with authors/publishers already.
You mean in term of internet archives mission and where it can do the most good? I would agree.
The Internet Archive is a good project.
However, like most tech obsessives, they still don't understand, or perhaps care about, consent.
Does an author need to consent to have their book added to a physical library?
Once you publish and widely sell a work should an author really get to decide that their book cannot be borrowed or lent?
That isn't what we are talking about, apologies for not being clear with that.
We are talking about them not taking down things like tweets etc without what they consider a 'good reason'.
The article is about the internet archive's book library, however I'm very open to discussing tweets.
Maybe this is because I was taught "once it's on the Internet it's out there forever" growing up, but I have no problem with everything posted to the internet being archived forever. Why should someone have the ability to scrub their past and pretend they are perfect? Sure I don't agree with every opinion I've ever posted, but that doesn't mean I should be able to pretend I never said those things.
I see no difference between a newspaper recording a public speech and the Internet Archive recording a public tweet.
Because things can be posted about other people without their consent. Things like revenge porn, the location of air defenses, etc.
I think it’s something that is currently being figured out in various legal systems around the world.
I agree, those are examples of things that should be able to be deleted from an archive. In my mind those are different issues than just the archive though, and we should probably have laws in place ensuring that content like that can be removed from anywhere on the Internet.
But it really seems like you're arguing that "some content shouldn't be archived forever", not that "an archive must receive consent before recording public Internet data."
Why should someone have the ability to scrub their past and pretend they are perfect?
That's not what it does. People are capable of changing on their own and thus should have the right for their past mistakes or opinions to be forgotten, or just to be forgotten anyway.
Having their past or just current opinions dragged up can actually have the opposite effect and force them to double down. So having some way of getting rid of it all could actually help them work through their terrible opinions.
If someone go out in public spouting terrible opinions, I think they should be responsible for explaining why they were wrong and why they no longer believe what they used to. That is hard and requires actually growing as a person, instead of just deleting their past and pretending they never said what they did.
Yes. There's an agreement and a system in place for that. While I support the internet archives efforts in general. Consent is a very important right. Not everyone cares or wants everything about them preserved. People also want the right to be forgotten.
A balance, definitely needs to be struck. Even if it is opt-out.
Im very curious what you mean by " there's an agreement and a system in place for that." Can an author tell a library that they are not allowed to lend specific books? I've never heard of anything like that
An author can tell anyone that. And as long as they still control the rights to their work, they can enforce it. Should you sign your rights over to a publisher, then that becomes the publisher's prerogative, not yours.
The consensus and case law surrounding traditional libraries. Is that libraries generally still bought physical copies. Even in the age of the e-book today. They still play by publisher rules of artificial scarcity and limited lending. Only lending out for a limited period, the number of licenses they purchased from the publisher.
The Internet archive however, allows everyone to infinitely duplicate items in the archive. Which is great for retention. But as a business model, it sucks. I support the archives mission. But is the archive supporting any of those they archive? And while generally invaluable in a good way. They don't offer a way to be forgotten for those that do want to be forgotten. Then again neither do most major internet focused entities. Reddit etc undeleting comments their authors deleted for instance.
An author can tell anyone that.
I really don't understand how this would work. They can't do the normal legal nonsense of claiming they are only selling me a license to the book, if they sell a physical copy of the book to me. After they sell me a physical book they cannot prevent me from lending or reselling it.
If authors/publishers could find some way to legally do this they would, I just don't think they can.
I understand why a library can't make copies of a book (as far as I understood it the internet archive was "limiting" access to how many copies of a book can be viewed at a time) the copyright protections are clear. But copyright does not cover resale or lending.
Oh then I misunderstood you. Yes, if an author self publishes and sells copies. Their control over said copy largely ends when it leaves their possession. In fact they only maintain one right to it after that point. The copy right. Which unfortunately IA is a bit fast and loose with.
I'm not opposed to "the right to be forgotten" but imo that should apply to private speech, not something posted publicly. If you publish something on the open internet I feel like you've given up that right (like an author deciding to give copies of a book to friends vs an author selling a book in stores)
Yeah, the concent of a megacorporation who owns the rights to a bunch of books shouldn't matter when freedom of information is on the line.
That isn't what we are talking about, apologies for not being clear with that.
We are talking about them not taking down things like tweets etc without what they consider a 'good reason'.
These corporations absolutely are immortal thieves. But it is important to respect consent as well. The solution isn't to ignore consent, but to change the system to make the thieves obsolete or irrelevant. To find better ways to reward those who culturally enrich society outside of capitalist cycles of false scarcity.
I have mixed feelings. I'm glad they survived the lawsuits, and now they can spend their funding on their actual goals rather than it going towards lawyers.
On the other hand, it's really sad that they had to delete so much of their archive - over half a million books, and a bunch of recordings from their Great 78 Project (which was archiving 300k+ music albums released between ~1900 and 1950). A lot of the things that can't be archived are eventually going to become lost media.
I really hope that they didn't actually delete anything, and only just removed public access.
And open themselves up to massive penalties? That would be beyond stupid.
I wouldn't think a library/archive retaining data in an offline form would incur penalties, and I feel like preserving books for the future is the opposite of stupid.
Preserving is important, sure. But if the settlement required them to delete it and they keep an offline backup and this ever gets out, the settlement is voided and it opens up a world of hurt for them.
This is not a debate about the merits of preservation but about legal repercussions for the Internet Archive.
I'm 95% sure the settlement with the publishers would have included a clause requiring the Internet Archive to delete all "infringing" material in their possession.
what's your methodology for that 95% figure? because Internet Archive themselves mention no such clause:
The lawsuit only concerns our book lending program. The injunction clarifies that the Publisher Plaintiffs will notify us of their commercially available books, and the Internet Archive will expeditiously remove them from lending. Additionally, Judge Koeltl also signed an orderin favor of the Internet Archive, agreeing with our request that the injunction should only cover books available in electronic format, and not the publishers’ full catalog of books in print
Because this case was limited to our book lending program, the injunction does not significantly impact our other library services. The Internet Archive may still digitize books for preservation purposes, and may still provide access to our digital collections in a number of ways, including through interlibrary loan and by making accessible formats available to people with qualified print disabilities. We may continue to display “short portions” of books as is consistent with fair use—for example, Wikipedia references (as shown in the image above). The injunction does not affect lending of out-of-print books. And of course, the Internet Archive will still make millions of public domain texts available to the public without restriction.
the judgement did not require they delete the books from their archives, only that they stop lending out digital copies of books fitting specific criteria. which should be obvious because possession not copyright infringement, reproduction/distribution is.
in fact, the judgement specfically allows Internet Archive to continue to use those books "for the purpose of accessibility for 'eligible persons'"
Distributed archives seem to be the way forward. It's much harder to take something down if it's spread across the globe and not controlled by a single entity
It's also much harder to guarantee preservation with distributed archive. Example: torrents with 0 seeders.
That's why you need more people and spread the word. If enough people and devices are dedicated to the archival probably cess, the safer it is
So 5 times more overhead to guarantee the safety of data, that is x5 more cost cause it's not like regular people have servers with lots of memory just sitting at their homes.
There are some around. I know of https://annas-archive.org/ at least
But Kahle said the lawsuits against IA showed that “massive multibillion-dollar media conglomerates” have their own interests in controlling the flow of information. “That’s what they really succeeded at—to make sure that Wikipedia readers don’t get access to books,” Kahle said.
And that's why I hate copyright.
There is nothing more evil than actively fighting to ensure people have less access to knowledge in the future.
Good read.
It's a bummer to see AI gobbling up entire books and often misrepresenting them but then IA can't provide the source material.
I'm glad their very ill advised move didn't kill the entire internet archive project.
If they are going to do something so reckless again they should make it a totally new project not attached to the internet archive at all.
They might not get so lucky again in the future
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